Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy has become a household name in the Middle East and sparked a global uproar after a friend posted a photo of her naked on Twitter.

It was later posted on Twitter with the hashtag #nudephotorevolutionary. The tweet was viewed over a million times, while Aliaa Magda Elmahdy's followers jumped from a few hundred to more than 14,000.Aliaa Magda Elmahdy actions have received global media coverage and provoked outrage in Egypt, a conservative Muslim country where most women wear the veil. Many liberals fear that Elmahdy's actions will hurt their prospects in the parliamentary election next week.

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, an Egyptian blogger is challenging the puritanical Islamic in her country, taking it off and the publication of the photos on the web.Aliaa Magda Elmahdy said that it’s her naked body.In an unprecedented move, Aliaa Magda Elmahdy on Sunday dared to publish a nude self-portrait, along with other nude photos on her blog as an expression of personal freedom.

“I have the right to live freely anywhere,”Aliaa wrote in her blog. “I feel happy and satisfied when I feel I am truly free,”Aliaa Magda Elmahdy said.Titled “fan a’ry”, meaning art nude, Aliaa published several photos of herself naked, including one with strategically placed yellow rectangles.

“The yellow rectangles on the eyes, mouth and genitals look like censoring of our knowledge, expression and sexuality,”wrote Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, who turns 20 on Wednesday.On Aliaa Magda Elmahdy Facebook page, Aliaa Magda Elmahdy wrote that she was “echoing the cries against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy.”

An Egyptian activist, media arts student at American University in Cairo, Aliaa Magda Elmahdy took the pictures in the house of her parents. Aliaa Magda Elmahdy blog also has a picture of a seated bare man holding a guitar.While the placement of provocative pictures on the Web rarely raises eyebrows in the West, in a gradually more conservative Egypt what Aliaa Magda Elmahdy did is an unprecedented act of defiance.

Egyptian activist, Aliaa Magda Elmahdy have enjoyed relatively more personal freedom than their female counterparts elsewhere in the Arab world, but a worrying consequence of the fall of the old dictator Hosni Mubarak has been the rise of the Islamic Brotherhood and other religious parties.Western clothes, once common in middle-class women, has given way progressively more to headscarves and more modest attire.And art students like Aliaa Magda Elmahdy can no longer draw nude models because they have been banned.